ired by their humour, rushes up skyward like a
coruscating firework, in a thousand hissing light-balls, crackling
serpents, and lightning-like rockets."

"But it must be remembered," said Theodore, "that this pleasure is
possible only when the friends in question, besides being intellectual
and endowed with humour, possess the talent not only of talking, but of
listening, the principal ingredient of real conversation."

"Of course," said Lothair; "those people who constitute themselves
'spokesmen' destroy all conversation--and so, in a lesser degree,
do the 'witty' folk, who go from one company to another with
anecdotes, crammed full of all sorts of shallow sayings; a kind of
self-constituted 'Society clowns.' I knew a man who, being clever and
witty, and at the same time a terribly talkative fellow, was invited
everywhere to amuse the company; so that, the moment he came into a
room, everybody looked in his face, waiting till he came out with
something witty. The wretch was compelled to put himself to the
torture, in order to fulfil the expectations entertained of him as
well as he could, so that he could not avoid soon becoming flat and
commonplace; and then he was thrown aside by every one, like a used-up
utensil. He now creeps about, spiritless and sad, and seems to be like
that dandy in Abener's 'Dream of Departed Souls,' who, brilliant as he
was in this life, is sorrowful and valueless in the other, because, on
his sudden and unexpected departure, he left behind him his snuff-box
of Spanish snuff, which was an integral part of him."

"Then, too," said Ottmar, "there are certain extraordinary people
who, when entertaining company, keep up an unceasing stream of
talk; not from conceit in themselves, but from a strange, mistaken
well-meaningness, for fear that people shouldn't be enjoying
themselves; and keep asking if people are not 'finding it dull,' and so
forth, thereby nipping every description of enjoyment in the bud in a
moment."'

"That is the very surest way to weary people," said Theodore, "and I
once saw it employed with the most brilliant success by my old
humourist of an uncle, who, I think, from what I have told you of him,
you know pretty intimately by this time. An old schoolfellow of his had
turned up--a man who was utterly tedious and unendurably wearisome in
all his works and ways--and he came to my uncle's house every forenoon,
disturbed him at his work, worried him to death, and then sat down